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The Hunt

I think I’d watch anything with Mads Mikkelsen in it. In fact, I feel I’ve watched most things already – After The Wedding, Open Hearts, A Royal Affair and Casino Royale (the James Bond film which brought him to prominence outside of Denmark).

Now add to that list The Hunt, a beautifully crafted Danish film in which Mikkelsen plays Lucas, a teacher whose life is shattered when a pupil (the daughter of a friend) accuses him of molesting her.

The film focuses not so much whether he did it or not as we assume from a very early stage that it is an innocent lie – the kind of lies that five-year-olds are prone to tell without realising the consequence.

Instead, it is the effect it has on Lucas (Mikkelsen’s character) and the small community in which he lives as a kind of collective hysteria takes over.

It is The Crucible for our times, with paedophilia the new witchcraft where the merest hint or accusation is tantamount to proof.

And even at the end of this film, when nominally things are back to normal, the tensions (and the suspicions) remain.

Another excellent product of a Danish film industry that can’t stop producing hits at the moment....